You might think that the "scaring" is actually happening by the people claiming that Health Care reform will literally mean mass mandatory execution of the elderly, but no, Obama is scaring them, by trying to pass legislation that will expand health care coverage and maybe rein in costs. HE SHOULDN'T HAVE BOTHERED.

We have entered uncharted territory in the fight over national health care. There's a new tone in the debate, and it's ugly. At the moment the Democrats are looking like something they haven't looked like in years, and that is: desperate.

They must know at this point they should not have pushed a national health-care plan.

Don't Democrats know that the fastest way to get a presidency declared dead by the media is for them to actually try to pass liberal legislation?

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Despite the fact that the "protesters" showing up to Town Halls to abuse congressmen are made up entirely of a) rageful crazies who believe in conspiratorial lies and b) organized, professional stooges of major lobbying concerns, Peggy Noonan is right that it is stupid for Democrats to attack them, mostly because The Liberal Mainstream Media is unable and unwilling to distinguish "anecdotal evidence of a disenfranchised-feeling minority all ginned up on crazy lies" from "a grassroots popular movement with broad public support" or whatever. And it does just look like these congressmen are pissed that their actual idiot constituents are trying to tell them their concerns (which is how most congressmen feel about their idiot constituents but you're not supposed to say it).

Everything else, though, Peggy is wrong about.

The passions of the protesters, on the other hand, are not a surprise. They hired a man to represent them in Washington. They give him a big office, a huge staff and the power to tell people what to do. They give him a car and a driver, sometimes a security detail, and a special pin showing he's a congressman. And all they ask in return is that he see to their interests and not terrify them too much. Really, that's all people ask. Expectations are very low. What the protesters are saying is, "You are terrifying us."

If you think these people voted for Obama, or that they think he represents them, you are wrong. What they protesters are saying is, "We are trying to terrify you."

But it's nice that Peggy's column on how these people are honorable, innocent citizens who are merely frightened by the excesses of Washington or whatever ran on the day shit got violent.

So without shitting on concerned citizens exercising their right to assemble, it should just be noted that these people are being lied to about the thing they are protesting, they are being organized and instructed to disrupt town halls by Republican political organizations and major media outlets, and their disruptions are then broadcast and celebrated by the people who lied to them, initially, in order to gin up the outrage.

It's all very pomo and complicated, actually, with the spectacle and whatnot.

Here are the rioting teabaggers in Florida. Ybor City throws such killer congressional town hall meetings!